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Photo by Biff
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Arachnophoba: The Cure Is
Only a Bunch of Books Away
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I used to suffer from extreme arachnophobia. If
there were a tiny spider on the other side of a large room, just knowing it was there would drive me nuts. I’d get the creeps and I’d have to leave the room or kill the spider. In my third year of
college, I lived on the top floor of a boarding house. It was a breeding ground for spiders. I nearly went insane. I spent evenings smacking my arms and legs and head, anywhere that suddenly felt like
tiny fangs penetrating my skin. Fortunately, most occured on my head, where I was likely to inflict the least amount of damage. Every day as a horror. Nights were worse. I drank. I smoked. I toked. I
worried and fretted. Until finally I said: “Shit.” I went to the bookstore and bought a book about spiders. I went to the library and pored over volumes of eight-legged yichies. I got to know about
spiders. I forced myself to watch one suck the life out of a fly. That was really special. But I didn’t run, faint, or puke. Finally, one day, I picked a spider up (a big brown fat-bodied speckled one)
and let it crawl across my palm. I put it down and, since then, I’ve had terrible nightmares about being eaten alive by a large brown speckled spider. But I’m OK when I’m awake.
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Top of Page
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This is the air conditioner that inspired Smoke Break. Repaired now, it’s behind the Chestnut Complex Building in
Fredericton, which houses LearnStream, the company I worked for at the time. I was a smoker then, and used to come here several times a day to light up by myself or with others. On one of these
occasions, I was by myself and I thought I saw something moving in the top of the unit just inside a section where the metal grate had been broken in the winter by a snow plow. I stared at the movement
for a while, but didn’t bother to check it out. On the way up the stairs, I wondered about it the movement, and that wondering led to the story. I never did find out what the movement was. Must have been
my lucky day.
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Python or Hesse?
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This was one of the fastest stories I ever wrote. Once the idea came into my head, it almost wrote itself. It took three
days (i.e., evenings after work). I laughed most of the time. I had intended the spider to be a bit more serious, more threatening, more angst. But the damn thing wrote itself as a smartass. I wanted
Hess, the spider wanted Monte Python. So much for the accusations of “philosophizing”. I would never philosophize.
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